Podcast: Match Made in Space -- New Companies and Traditional Giants

Major developments in space are the subject of this week’s Check 6 podcast. Under a program NASA calls Commercial Crew, the U.S. space civil agency awarded contracts worth up to $6.8 billion to Boeing and to SpaceX to build spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Separately, a name most people don’t associate with space -– Amazon’s Jeff Bezos -– popped up in a surprise announcement about a replacement for the big RD-180 rocket engines that United Launch Alliance buys from Russia. Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, has been working secretly on the engine for several years.

Join me, Jim Asker, Aviation Week’s executive editor; Frank Morring, our senior space technology editor, and Guy Norris, our Los Angeles Bureau chief and lead propulsion reporter as we discuss the developments and the relationship of “New Space” companies and the traditional aerospace giants.